KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As videos of leak­ing liq­ue­fied pe­tro­le­um gas (LPG) cylin­ders con­tin­ue to cir­cu­late on so­cial me­dia, an­oth­er fam­i­ly is prepar­ing to take le­gal ac­tion over the death of a loved one from an ex­plo­sion.

Rakesh George, whose wife Ria died on Sep­tem­ber 30 af­ter suf­fer­ing third-de­gree burns from an LPG ex­plo­sion, told Guardian Me­dia that he has al­ready re­tained at­tor­neys. His de­ci­sion fol­lows a sim­i­lar move by Bri­an Joseph, whose son Be­vaughn died af­ter a gas cylin­der ex­plod­ed at their Pe­nal home.

Ria, 47, a su­per­mar­ket su­per­vi­sor from Dig­i­ty Vil­lage, Debe, suf­fered burns to 32 per cent of her body, al­leged­ly caused by a leak­ing 20 lb LPG cylin­der. She fought for her life for weeks be­fore suc­cumb­ing to mul­ti­ple or­gan fail­ure.

George said they bought the cylin­der from a pass­ing NP truck and had nei­ther smelt gas nor cooked the night be­fore the ex­plo­sion.

“We are plan­ning. I have a lawyer, but it is up to them. I just want some form of clo­sure; some­thing has to come out of this. At this point, no amount of mon­ey can bring her back, but some­body has to be held re­spon­si­ble for it. At least they should own up and say yes, it was their fault, and make a cor­rec­tion so that it does not hap­pen to any­body else again,” George said.

He said his fo­cus af­ter the ex­plo­sion was sav­ing his wife’s life, not mak­ing po­lice or fire re­ports. On­ly af­ter her death did those mat­ters be­come a con­cern. While po­lice seized the cylin­der, he has heard noth­ing fur­ther about the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. George said safe­ty ad­vi­sories on­ly be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing af­ter the tragedy and ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that NP nev­er con­tact­ed him.

“It is a lit­tle too late now be­cause what­ev­er hap­pened has al­ready hap­pened. Be­cause the in­ci­dents start to hap­pen more on a reg­u­lar ba­sis, they do not have a choice now, so they have to go out there and make them­selves look good.”

The ex­plo­sion de­stroyed the kitchen, ap­pli­ances, cab­i­nets, plumb­ing, and elec­tri­cal sys­tems. George has man­aged to clean up but can­not be­gin re­pairs. He has not re­placed the stove or gas cylin­der, and his moth­er now cooks and wash­es for him.

“This is re­al hard be­cause my wife and I court­ed for ten years, plus we were mar­ried for 14 years. That is 24 years. I do not know how to go about this, but at the end of the day, I have to work; I have bills to pay.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to NP and Ram­co re­gard­ing re­cent leaks and ex­plo­sions, but nei­ther pro­vid­ed re­spons­es by press time.

Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Andy Hutchin­son said the Fire Pre­ven­tion Unit had in­ves­ti­gat­ed sev­er­al LPG-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents and de­ter­mined caus­es in some cas­es, but oth­ers re­mained un­re­solved. He ex­plained that de­pend­ing on the size of the blast, crit­i­cal ev­i­dence was of­ten de­stroyed, and some tests re­quired spe­cialised tools and train­ing that the Fire Ser­vice cur­rent­ly lacks.

“So while we will be able to de­ter­mine some, in some cas­es, we can’t have the in­ves­ti­ga­tion done to the depth we re­quire. If we have a cylin­der that isn’t leak­ing at the valve, but there is a seal at the bot­tom, and it ex­plodes, it would have al­ready had a hole or a rot spot due to ox­i­da­tion. When the ex­plo­sion oc­curs, it will rip that area open, so how will you now be able to de­ter­mine the area that caused the leak or the blast? The equip­ment and in­ves­tiga­tive tools re­quired are not gen­er­al tools,” Hutchin­son said.

He added that some ex­plo­sions were caused by con­sumer is­sues, such as us­ing in­cor­rect gas heads, porous hoses, or non-com­pli­ant fit­tings.

NP ad­vised cus­tomers to per­form a soapy-wa­ter leak test be­fore use, keep cylin­ders at least 1.5 me­tres from any stove or ig­ni­tion source, turn off reg­u­la­tors when not in use, and on­ly ac­cept cylin­ders with in­tact seals. It al­so urged the pub­lic to re­port any miss­ing O-rings, vis­i­ble dam­age, or leaks, and launched an “LPG School Safe­ty Car­a­van” to teach chil­dren safe cylin­der han­dling.

Ram­co, mean­while, iden­ti­fied de­fec­tive reg­u­la­tors and hoses as ma­jor caus­es of ex­plo­sions. The com­pa­ny ad­vised cus­tomers to use on­ly ap­proved equip­ment, re­place reg­u­la­tors every five years, in­spect hoses reg­u­lar­ly, and en­sure fit­tings meet re­quired safe­ty stan­dards.

Hutchin­son again urged any­one un­sure about check­ing for leaks to turn off the valve, dis­con­nect the cylin­der, and con­tact the Fire Ser­vice or dis­trib­u­tor for as­sis­tance. He warned against us­ing flames and ad­vised mov­ing any leak­ing cylin­der out­doors. If pos­si­ble, he said, sub­merge it in wa­ter to slow gas dis­per­sion.